Backlash is sadly an intrinsic part of social progress. When oppressed people make their claim for justice, they trigger a response – a fightback by those who want to maintain the status-quo.

My thesis is that appropriately designed military robots will be better able to avoid civilian casualties than existing human war-fighters and might therefore make future wars more ethical.

If you make everything you do data driven, it's an inherent limitation on experimentation. Most PLCs are so driven by the finance department that they've lost the capacity to get lucky.

At one site, a mature man carrying a white flag was shot dead by an Israeli soldier. To those less experienced or with a 'soft' generally compassionate outlook, this might immediately seem a clear case of unlawful killing – a 'war crime'. However, the general offered a different perspective. He considered the terrain and highlighted the dilemma faced by the soldier in high-risk situations: might the soldier be genuinely uncertain over whether the white flag genuinely signified surrender?

Managing in the age of outrage is not the same as managing outrage. Managing outrage is crisis management—you can turn it over to a part of the organization that's pro at it and then get on with your day. It's firefighting.